@msf who said "Schwab doesn't allow Roths, nor does Fidelity" HUH?
I'm sure I must be misunderstanding something but I've had a full-scale Roth Brokerage account at Fidelity since they became available. Are you referring to some other type of Roth account?

This must be my day for not writing clearly. I was referring to individual 401k's - stated in the bracketing sentences, but omitted in the middle sentence. There is no Roth option in Schwab's or Fidelity's individual 401k.
I had written: "In addition, it offers a free individual 401(k) plan with Roth option, as does Vanguard. Schwab doesn't allow Roths, nor does Fidelity. Merrill doesn't offer a free individual 401k."
From Schwab's individual 401k adoption agreement:

Will Roth Elective Deferrals be permitted under this Plan in addition to Pre-Tax Elective Deferrals?
["No" is checked]

The whole rotating-discount/cash-back thing is a turnoff to me. Every quarter or month you need to remember which card to use to maximize which benefits ... too much work! I stick w/my Amex Plat and Amazon Prime Visa and keep things simple so I can worry about other more important things. :)

I obviously wasn't clear. I did write: "on the category of your choice". No rotating categories (though you can change it yourself). It appears that John is using "gas" as his chosen category (that's the default). I use online purchases.
John wrote that he is using Merrill as a brokerage. Assuming that he has at least $20K in that account, he should be getting 3.75% (or better) back with BofA's preferred rewards.
With other rebates, I believe he was referring to special one-off promotions. These are not rotating categories, but rather one-time or limited promotions for individual stores. For example, I can get 5% in addition to the usual cash back for purchases at Starbucks up to $30. The nice thing about this particular promotion is that I can load $30 on my Starbucks card now and get that extra $1.50 back. I don't have to remember it at all.
The BofA travel card gives a flat 1.5% back. After you multiply it by the preferred rewards bonus, it can be as much as a flat 2.625%. No rotating categories.
There is a gotcha with this card which I tried to explain tersely above. Say you spend $50K/year, and that earns you $1,312.50. So long as you have charged at least that much in "travel" expenses (which is a very broad category), BofA will credit the full amount against your credit card bill.
These days, that's the cost of a couple of round trip airline tickets. I know, who's flying?

Has Schilling ever been right?

06/2011(link) "New recession begins next year, Shilling says" = wrong
02/2013 (link) "Gary Shilling: Why You Should Sell Stocks And Buy Treasurys" = way wrong
11/2016(link) "A Trump win might be bad for stocks" = wrong

The whole rotating-discount/cash-back thing is a turnoff to me. Every quarter or month you need to remember which card to use to maximize which benefits ... too much work! I stick w/my Amex Plat and Amazon Prime Visa and keep things simple so I can worry about other more important things. :)

Hi sir MSF...BOA credit probably one if best credit card around, give 5_10% off on certain places frequently use (this quater starbuck dumkin donuts and LaMadelin)...also 3% cash bsck gas restaurants and 2% everything else. We like our merrilllynch advisor know him for many yrs charges 1% annually and only minimal in managed acct

Hi sir MSF...BOA credit probably one if best credit card around, give 5_10% off on certain places frequently use (this quater starbuck dumkin donuts and LaMadelin)...also 3% cash bsck gas restaurants and 2% everything else. We like our merrilllynch advisor know him for many yrs charges 1% annually and only minimal in managed acct

For us we have Vanguard 13 years, schwab 11 years, and merrilledge 7 years. All are easy to talk to representatives, low cost trading, good bonddesks, schwab offers excellence research for stocks/mutual funds. All maintenance fees extremely low (for instance merrilledge charge you 0.7% annually fees but you need only 100ks And 1%if less 100k in acct [rest can be self managed without financial advisor])
Mama has Fidelity and we use it to buy etf and bonds, its reasonable but I heard they have best cd/ visa cards 2% cash back
Which firms do you folks prefer

A decade ago I looked fairly closely into different brokerages' bond services. What I found at the time was that while offerings were of course different, they tended to rely on third party services for inventory. So their offerings at any given time, while different, were similar. Fidelity would offer the same bonds at a lower price than Schwab.
Things may have changed, but a very small spot check (1 bond) suggests that this pricing differential remains. Calif (Sacramento) muni, callable starting in two years, maturing in five, CUSIP 786073BG0. Schwab price: 118.636 (2.394% YTW), Fidelity price: 118.536 [sic] (2.407% YTW). Both charge a $1/bond commission. I've bought bonds at Fidelity. Because of the higher cost, I haven't at Schwab.
If you're looking at keeping $100K at Merrill, BofA credit cards can come out better. Their cash rewards cards (with the $100K balance) pay 5.25% on the category of your choice (e.g. online purchases), 3.5% on grocery and warehouse purchases, and 1.75% on everything else. (The higher rebates are limited to $2500 in purchases/quarter). Of it you travel a bit (which can include mass transit, zoos(!) and other oddities), there's a cash back card that pays 2.625% on everything. The catch there is that the rebate must be used to cover travel costs.
With respect to mutual funds, Merrill Edge is limited in its offerings. Essentially, just NTF share classes are available. So you can't buy lower cost institutional shares even if the total cost of ownership would be less for you. Fidelity and Schwab are better in this regard. Fidelity also enable you to buy additional shares of a TF fund for $5 while at Schwab it's still $50. Vanguard's advantage is that it offers some institutional shares with lower mins than at Fidelity or Schwab. My impression is that T. Rowe Price's third party fund offerings are slim, but TRP hasn't posted its "catalogue" for years.
ETF and stock trading are free at Merrill, Fidelity, Schwab, and Vanguard. At TRP they can cost $20, unless the ETF is on their NTF list.
IMHO where TRP shines is in it broad offering of fine mutual funds. Essentially what @rforno said. In addition, it offers a free individual 401(k) plan with Roth option, as does Vanguard. Schwab doesn't allow Roths, nor does Fidelity. Merrill doesn't offer a free individual 401k.
I've found TRP's service to be on par with Fidelity and Schwab. I have found service at Merrill and Vanguard wanting.

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/epa-approves-2-lysol-cleaning-sprays-that-kill-the-coronavirus-in-2-minutes-161224269.html
I can't find any of these in stores past 3 months
Only if they can make special inhaler forms for trumpo fans and deliver several boxes to trumpo and wh
not much suffering..lasting only 2 mins

Is Trow better than Vanguard Fidelity? What are their best qualities
For us we have Vanguard 13 years, schwab 11 years, and merrilledge 7 years. All are easy to talk to representatives, low cost trading, good bonddesks, schwab offers excellence research for stocks/mutual funds. All maintenance fees extremely low (for instance merrilledge charge you 0.7% annually fees but you need only 100ks And 1%if less 100k in acct [rest can be self managed without financial advisor])
Mama has Fidelity and we use it to buy etf and bonds, its reasonable but I heard they have best cd/ visa cards 2% cash back
Which firms do you folks prefer

Here’s A. Gary Shilling advocating bonds.
In an interview just up on YouTube. He also thinks stocks will fall from here (+/- here) into 2021. I don’t see where bond yields can go much lower.

+1

"Nothing follows"? Jeez, that seems a bit cruel ... or perhaps despairing in a Yeats sort of way: "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world" sort of way.
T. Rowe Price Multi-Strategy Total Return keeps ticking up. Positive by 4.7% YTD, as of 7/6/20. Cheap enough to be in the running for "the new 60/40," at least if you assume that the "40" in question is fated to fall flat. From my perspective, the challenges are my inability to explain to myself what exactly the strategies do - I can repeat the words back to myself after I read them, but they don't stick - and, by its nature as a quant fund, the portfolio's positioning is inexplicable.
Queens Road Value keeps ticking along, down 9% YTD which is still top tier for a LCV fund. Sort of regrettable that it's losing assets even in years when its relative and absolute performance as both excellent (2017, up 20% and top 10% performer - investors flee). Increasingly it's the poster child for a "friends and family" fund: Queens Road manages over a billion for rich folks but can't get much past $30 million here.
The BlackRock and DFA ETFs-in-registration are interesting, at the very least. The active ETF / non-transparent active ETF development should be changing a lot of calculations.
Chip thought Lynn's piece was his most useful ever, in part because she can make the translation of investment options into Excel. Charles's was a great change-of-pace and I dearly appreciate Ed's willingness to become more directive about alternative investments.
- - - - -
Two personal notes. Yesterday Will's Covid test came back negative ("none detected"), eight days after its submission. Sadly, the tests still have a high false negative rate; research published in June by Johns Hopkins says that there's a 30% probability that a person with a negative result is actually positive. Still no symptoms, we remain cautious and cautiously optimistic.
Chip shared online part of my short reflection on the reciprocal relation between rights and responsibilities. That went about the way you'd expect. The angrier respondents - like the woman (founder of a public relations firm? Oh, good.) caught on camera destroying a mask display at her local Target store - sort of skipped "thinking about the argument" went straight to "outrage." The results fell into two camps: the "you can't make me do nuthin'" camp and the "if you can make me wear a mask, then I can make you give up red meat and get your sorry *ss to the gym" camp.
I wonder if learning to talk about "externalities" would help address either? Sometimes my actions affect only me. Other times, my actions affect you. "Externalities" is the term economists give for the effects on you. Sometimes those effects are welcome; if I improve the exterior of my house, the value of your adjacent property goes up. That's a positive externality. If I shoot wildlife and dump their carcasses to rot in my yard, that's a negative externality.
Every culture implicitly decides what level of negative externality justifies some sort of sanction. If you get drunk at home, no sanction. Drunk and disorderly, some sanction. Drunk while operating a motor vehicle, major sanction. In general, as the magnitude of your effect on others risks, so does the swiftness and scope of the sanction. A person's decision to eat meat (negligible externality) is seen as a lot different from their decision to poison a public waterway (major externality).
All of which only works if people are willing to listen to each other, agree on the underlying facts and discuss the response that best reflects our shared responsibilities as members of the same neighborhood, city, nation, culture or whatever.
- - - - -
Take great care and, as ever, thanks!
David

This is the smartest thing I have read, esp the proper polling, and I hope the Dems do not fall into it:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/06/22/2016-what-democrats-get-wrong-about-that-election/

Pretty much been on auto-pilot the past month. Mentioned cutting back on miners a week or two ago, but still have plenty of exposure - and gold just keeps running higher. Watching a smallish stake in PRLAX, purchased in late March purely for excitement. Nice rebound. Now Bolsonaro of Brazil (largest fund holding) has tested positive for Covid-19. Gosh ... Golly. Wonder how that happened?

Love to show how these sites are wrong. Below is what Predictit showed just before the 2016 election. It said all the way to the election that Hilary will win, so much for accuracy ;-)
The stock market is not a good predictor. "The economy, stupid" is a phrase coined by James Carville in 1992
(link)

Getting Closer to cashless:
“We have a world in which there is less contact,” he said. “People’s habits are changing as we speak.”

Those dynamics are creating a golden moment for credit card companies, banks and digital platforms, which are capitalizing on the crisis to advance the cashless revolution by encouraging consumers and retailers to use cards and smartphone apps that yield lucrative fees. In Britain alone, retailers paid 1.3 billion pounds (about $1.7 billion) in third-party fees in 2018, up £70 million from the year before, according to the British Retail Consortium.
Payment and processing companies such as PayPal (whose stock is up about 55 percent this year) and Adyen, based in the Netherlands (up 72 percent), also stand to gain. So do data analytics and fraud prevention companies, and businesses that enable merchants to accept card payments.

https://nytimes.com/2020/07/06/business/cashless-transactions.html
Instead of handing out spare change you can now hand out Acorns:

One of the commenters suggests we look at SPX V Gold so I did. It would imply that the SPX peaked in late 2018.
https://stockcharts.com/c-sc/sc?s=$SPX:$GOLD&p=D&yr=3&mn=0&dy=0&i=t8724814200c&r=1594128517294

Hi @Mona,
I have a couple of questions. Do you (or don't you) feel that FD1000 has brought value to the MFO board?
I for one feel he has because for his perspectives on income funds.
And, my second question. Does it matter if he was (or was not) put on suspension on the M* board?
I was taught not to put others down unless you are putting them down on the Prayer List.
Something to think on.
Peace be with you.
Old_Skeet

These articles have been published when the market were lower by 5,10 and 15%. I have heard in the last 10 years that rates can only go up, that the stock market is overvalued for years, that inverted yield signals top, that PE + PE10 are too high.
One day it will be right, I just like to know exactly when

Thanks for your opinion.
I would also like to read your thoughts on the Morningstar forums. I was told that you were put on suspended status. Has M* lifted the suspension?

Hi @FD1000:
Thanks for making comment.
While my system might seem complicated ... but, when looking at the three main feeds of the barometer and understaning them ... it really is not complicated at all. The barometer spins off of a blended earnings feed which is comprised of both TTM earnings and forward estimates. This gives credit for what stocks have done and what they are anticipated to do. This feed is used to compute a blended P/E Ratio and from there an earnings yield. The second feed is a breadth feed which looks at the percent number of stocks that are trading above their 50 & 200 day moving averages. Following this feed gives me some insight as to how much upside might be left or are we topping out? Perhaps, starting to head downward? And, the third major feed is money flow feed. I find it important to know which way money is flowing (in or out) and by how much. All of the three feeds are scaled and when combined produce a barometer reading which is also scaled with readings ranging from extremely overbought to extremely oversold with fair value being in the middle.
With this, it is really quite simple when one gets down to understanding the nuts and bolts of the barometer of how it works ... and, the information that it generates has been quite useful to me. This information is then used to aid me in making calls that adjust my baseline asset allocation of 20% cash, 40% income and 40% equity with about 10% of the cash which can be moved around to overweight when felt warranted. Currently, as I write, I am overweight the income and equity areas of my portfolio by +5% each. I'm thinking, that this will soon change as I'm looking to trim equities back by 5% to their normal asset allocation of 40%. This is due to my belief that equity valuations are now streached relative to their current and nearterm earning's projection although money flow coming into the Index is presently good; but, short volumes are high.
Thanks again for the comment ... and, coming from you ... (for me) it speaks volumes.
Cordially,
Old_Skeet

These articles have been published when the market were lower by 5,10 and 15%. I have heard in the last 10 years that rates can only go up, that the stock market is overvalued for years, that inverted yield signals top, that PE + PE10 are too high.
One day it will be right, I just like to know exactly when